Swedish firm Investment AB Kinnevik plans to invest more in India

Swedish firm Investment AB Kinnevik aims to increase the share of Indian investments to a tenth of its global portfolio over the next five years.Shashwati Shankar | ET Bureau | Updated: February 03, 2016, 08:25 IST

Swedish firm Investment AB Kinnevik, which has backed online classifieds major Quikr, aims to increase the share of Indian investments to a tenth of its global portfolio over the next five years.

The firm — known for backing German incubator Rocket Internet, which owns fashion portal Jabong in India — is looking at investing in technology-based ventures in areas like education and healthcare.

"We are going to be a net contributor of capital to both our existing companies Jabong and Quikr, investing more money to make them bigger," said Lorenzo Grabau, CEO, Investment AB Kinnevik.

"...As well as making new investments, taking the capital out of places that are not in India and putting it in India," he said. At present, the firm's investments in India constitute about 2-3 % of its overall portfolio.

It manages a corpus of $10 billion globally. At present, 55% of investments are in the ecommerce and marketplace category, 38% in the communication sector, 4% in entertainment with the lowest investment in fintech, which accounts for about 3 %.

"The principal of democratising healthcare is very attractive to us, there are a lot of opportunities to create platforms that connect doctors and healthcare providers to people.

We are very keen on exploring this sector," said Grabau. When it comes to entertainment startups in India, the firm will wait to see how quality digital content players grow during the year before taking a leap into making investments.

As Grabau puts it, he views this sector as "very challenging, because consumers are constantly switching and trying different things, making the business model risky".